A Microfiche Appendix containing a source code of the computer program of the present invention is appended hereto as 8 sheets of microfiche containing a total of 499 frames and is hereby incorporated by reference into this application as if fully set forth herein.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the reconciliation and balancing of cash register cash drawers or tills. More particularly, the invention relates to a revenue balancing method and computer program that more quickly, accurately, and easily reconciles or balances revenue contained in a first cash drawer while at the same time building or filling a second cash drawer.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Grocery stores and other retail and wholesale establishments that use cash registers to ring up sales must regularly reconcile or balance cashiers"" cash drawers at the end of shifts to ensure that the money in the cash drawers matches sales figures for the cash registers. Cash drawers must also be xe2x80x9crebuiltxe2x80x9d or constructed in preparation for another cashier coming on shift.
Most stores typically balance and construct cash drawers with back office accounting personnel who manually remove and count the money from cash drawers after a cashier""s shift has ended and manually count and add money to new cash drawers. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that such manual methods of balancing and constructing cash drawers are very time consuming and often lead to miscounting errors. For large stores that regularly balance and construct many cash drawers every day, the costs associated with such cash drawer balancing and construction can be substantial.
Systems and methods that automate some aspects of cash drawer balancing and construction have been developed. However, these systems and methods still require accounting personnel to manually perform many of the steps required to balance and build cash drawers and therefore are still time consuming and prone to miscounting errors.
Another problem with prior art systems and methods of cash drawer balancing and reconciliation is the need to repeatedly perform pick-ups (the removal of excess cash from cash drawers for security reasons), loans (the addition of extra cash into cash drawers for change-making purposes), and/or the purchase of additional change by cashiers. Pick-ups, loans, and change purchasing typically involve several employees and therefore use a considerable amount of labor, especially for large stores.
The present invention solves the above-described problems and provides a distinct advance in the art of cash drawer reconciliation and construction systems and methods. More particularly, the present invention provides a revenue balancing method and computer program that more quickly, accurately, and easily reconciles or balances revenue contained in cash drawers at the end of cashiers"" shifts or breaks while at the same time building or constructing new cash drawers for new shifts. The present invention also effectively eliminates the need for pick-ups, loans, and purchasing of change.
In one preferred embodiment, the present invention is implemented with a computer program stored on a computer-readable media for directing operation of a computer. The computer first prompts an operator to remove revenue from a first cash drawer that was used by a cashier after a break or shift and to place the revenue in or on a second, initially empty cash drawer that is placed on a weigh scale. The computer receives weight measurements from the weigh scale as revenue is placed in or on the second cash drawer, and based on these weight indications, counts the revenue as it is added to the second cash drawer.
The computer continues to prompt the operator to add revenue to the second cash drawer until target amounts of each denomination have been reached, if available from the cash drawer being counted. After the target amounts have been added, the computer prompts the operator to remove any remaining revenue from the first cash drawer and to place it on top of the second cash drawer or directly on the scale. The computer receives from the scale an indication of the weight of the remaining revenue as it is placed on the weigh scale and counts this remaining revenue based on the weight indication.
Finally, the computer calculates a total amount of revenue that was removed from the first cash drawer based on the weighing of the revenue and reconciles or balances the total amount of revenue that was removed with sales information received from the cash register or a point-of-sale system interfaced to the revenue balancing system. The computer program may then prompt the operator to add additional revenue to the second cash drawer from another source if the first cash drawer did not contain enough of the required denominations to meet the target amounts.
The present invention is faster, more accurate, and easier to use than prior art methods and systems because revenue is weighed and automatically counted by a computer rather than manually counted by accounting personnel. The present invention also permits an operator to simultaneously reconcile or balance a first cash drawer after a cashier""s shift or break and construct or build a second cash drawer to be used by a cashier needing a fresh till. Applicant has discovered that the present invention reduces the labor time for balancing or reconciling a cash drawer from an average of 15-45 minutes to only three minutes or less. Moreover, unlike prior art revenue balancing methods and systems, the present invention simultaneously constructs a new cash drawer during this approximate three-minute time.